I'm a Crazy Person Magnet

I swear this shit only happens to me.

A couple months ago, we decided to try out this once a week home preschool program for Pie.  We don't want to put her in a traditional preschool (no need, no point) but this was at home, she'd gain another education influence, and I might learn some new things to do with her.  Fantastic!  This was absolutely ideal.  Only, shortly after we started, we realized the teacher is an asshole.  She's an over-sharer.  I'm an over-sharer, so I really don't have a ton of room to criticize, except I do have a basic grasp on discretion and when to use it.  She does not, and apparently considers her drug and bedroom habits appropriate discussion points.  In front of my three year old.

I really don't care what she (or, aside from my husband, any other adult) does in her free time, but the time she is at my house is not her free time.  That's her paid time assisting in the educational experience of my child.  Not only that, but my not caring means exactly that--I don't care.  Do what you want, keep it to yourself.  I'm not a foam pad parent, but I think it's reasonable not to want the tiny human I'm raising to hear about someone's visit to the free clinic or hear the detailed version of that bloody nose not being caused by the dry winter.  True stories, my friends. 

George hates her.  Hates.  He's been on me to quit for the majority of the time we've been doing it, but I've stuck it out because Pie really enjoys it.  Honestly, the lessons she brings aren't anything new, and for the most part, I've been doing the same activities with Pie for years.  Still, it's a change of pace and that's been good.  I don't know.  We've discussed keeping personal affairs personal, and she'll back off for a week, but overall, it hasn't done much good.  We always end up back at square one shortly after.  We're not even close.  I mean, I guess it would be easier to understand if we were, say, friends or something, but casual acquaintances would be a better description.

She really enjoys sending extremely graphic text messages to her boyfriend.  That's cool.  Not my business, except every now and then, a message makes it to my inbox instead, making it my business.  That's cool, too.  George and I get a giggle and move on.  Except today, instead of a stray text, I got a rather... um... colorful picture message.  Okay...

I texted her that I had received a message that was clearly not meant for me.  She called me, freaking out and insisting that sometimes people get messages that show up from her phone even though they're from someone unknown.  (Yeah, it confused me, too.)  Except, for not sending it, she sure seemed to know what was sent.  Just for shits and giggles (read: because George was pissed off) I called Verizon to see if that was, in fact, a possibility.

If anyone is new here, I loathe phone calls, so that was bad enough, but it seems someone at Verizon is omniscient and decided to make it extra difficult by having their strangest phone agent take my call.  His name was Cory.  I gave Cory the gist of the situation, and asked if it was possible these texts were from a stranger, but showing up under her number anyway.  And if it was possible, how likely.  Cory, weird or not, was very pleasant and helpful and placed me on hold to go look into it.

When he returned, he informed me the probability of what she said happened actually happening is more or less zero.  He didn't, however, think it was malicious.  Neither did I, so that wasn't really important, but that didn't stop him from going into a barrage of rather senseless and difficult to follow stories to back it up, anyway.

One time, Cory from Verizon took a picture of his butt.  He meant to text it to his wife, but sent it to his mother-in-law instead.  That's pretty cool, plus it was relevant, and made me laugh, but it all went downhill from there as he launched into some story about how teenagers are assholes and when he was a teenager he was an asshole and he did things that weren't nice and he knew they weren't nice but he did them anyway and now he feels bad but he didn't when he was an asshole teenager.  Yeah, it didn't make sense to me, either.  I have no idea what he did, and even less of an idea what the hell he was talking about or how it relates to pictures of Pie's home preschool teacher's taco, but I guess he was an asshole as a teenager.  I also guess you're allowed to use the word "asshole" to customers if you work for Verizon.  I'll keep that in mind if I ever need a job.

Then, he started talking about movies.  At this point, I started transcribing the conversation, because I'd figured out it was probably blog worthy.

"Did you see that new movie? It has that guy in it and he's a politician. He was also a general in that war movie."  He was talking really fast, and I like to imagine, throwing his arms about wildly.


"Umm... No..."  I actually know this is true, even with Cory's nondescript description.  That's because the only movies I've seen this year have been children's movies.  The word "new" was all I needed.


"You should see it!  It was good.  But yeah that guy had a problem like this.  Are you sure you didn't see that movie?"

"Was it animated?"

"No, but it's new. With that actor guy..."  Clearly, Cory enjoyed this movie enough to remember all the finest details!

"That helps. If it wasn't animated, I haven't seen it."

"Oh. Okay." He sounded really disappointed, and now I feel like maybe I should Google "movie about a politician who appears to be sending obscene picture messages even though he really isn't and is played by the same actor who played a general in that war movie".  If anything comes up, I can watch it and give Cory a call back to discuss our thoughts on the film and how it relates to my personal situation.